Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Abel Is More Able

- It's quiet tonight. Am I right that something is happening? Some big change?

- What do you mean?

- Is the city finally going to take the Citadel back from the family? What really happened with the last family that had the place? What did they do? Really do?

- Sold drugs, ran prostitutes.- And the boss was murdered, you told me.

- In the disco.

- What does the present "family" do?

- It's in the energy business.

- And you say they "control" the territory of the Citadel without a contract with the government, the city, which owns the land and buildings?

- Yes. Just like the other family.

- How?

- Can't explain.

- Influence? Bribery?

- Can't explain.

- This "family" holds the territory, operates their "energy business" from here. But no one from the energy business world seems to be around.

- That's correct.

- I am the only guest of the hotel.

- Usually.

- There was a taxi business when I first came here, a long time ago.

- The city shut them down.

- Why?

- Can't explain.

- Influence failed?

- My boss always fails.

- But they are still here, in control of the Citadel.

- They built a terrace in the courtyard - you can see it over there, the wood floorboards are rotting away - but the city forbid them to use it.

- Why?

- They say diplomats from nearby embassies complained about noise.

- Failure of influence again. And the new radio station here? What's that for?

- It costs them a lot. They have no advertising and 16 employees.

- And can't get a permit from the city. I've been following the drama. The police come, demand you stop broadcasting, you go off the air, then go on again immediately after the police leave. Then again. Then again. Then the police come, break down the door of the equipment room and carry out the transmitter in their arms. Then you set up broadcasting outside the city limits, still without a permit. Anything I left out?

- No. Sometimes I think this place is an insane asylum.

- Because all you guys here smoke and cough and smoke and cough, because one of you complains operatically non-stop and the other swears non-stop, because you yourself say you can't stop talking with people you don't like? Because the computer programmer in the corner room smokes so much that when he comes out into the lobby he leaves a scent trail in the air, who's a kind of walking ashtray? What about me? How do I fit in?

- You're crazy too.

- To be staying here.

- Yes. No one understands you. I try to protect you, tell everyone you're from a rich family, are here until the estate is settled.

- Sounds good

- I thought so.

- Might even have a little truth to it. Did I ever tell you the story of the fake and real Rolex I bought at a pawn shop in Atlantic City when I was visiting my mother there?

- I don't remember.

- The story goes like this. Dozens of casinos send send their losers out into the street where dozens of pawn shops buy their jewelry so they can go back to the casinos and lose more money. One afternoon I thought to visit the shops and look at their watches. At the first I came to there was a Rolex copy in the window. The Russian immigrant working there placed it on the counter and opened its back to show me the movement. He'd been tricked into buying this watch, he explained. The movement looked real, he'd never seen a fake movement before. How much did he want for the watch? 200 dollars. Take 150? Yes.

- You bought the watch?

- Yes. When I came next time to Budapest I sold it to another watch dealer for 600 dollars.

- How?

- The movement was real.

- And you knew it.

- And the pawn shop didn't. Real movement in fake watch.

- Great story.

- It is what I like to think life is like at the Citadel. We've got the "family" parading around, visiting the radio station that isn't a business, the hotel where I am usually the only guest, you guys working here smoking yourselves to death out of nothing else to do, I'm here seeing this because I make it look like a hotel and in my isolated life other people don't hear about it from me and show up asking to stay. It's all fake, but it is a real castle, it is the best place in Budapest, you and me are really here despite the fakery going on around us.

- Very poetic. Everyone is miserable here.

- Last night I was writing about Cain and Abel.

- From the Bible?

- Yes. Should I tell you what I wrote?

- How long will it take?

- One minute. Two, maximum.

- Ok.

- I'll be fast, fast. Here goes. Pay attention.

- Ha.

- The first humans were educated by God: they broke his rules, went adventuring, had children, created lives for themselves. The first human educated by humans killed his brother.

- Cain killed Abel.

- Yes. God's education was in breaking rules. Human education is about keeping rules. Cain was a farmer. He stayed put. He followed rules of when and what and where to plant. When he looked at the land he was reminded of which of his rules to apply.

When God did not accept his sacrifice Cain responded to God as he responded when a rule no longer applied because of change of weather: he simplified, uprooted the unrewarding rule from his world. If there is a rule, "Sacrifice to God / You'll be rewarded by his love" and no love is delivered, if you kill your brother whose sacrifice has been accepted the field is cleared of all sacrifice, nothing is growing there. Cain weeded Abel from his field.

As a shepherd Abel adapted rules to the terrain his herd wandered over. The land did not remind him of any set rule. Rules remained contingent. The story of Cain and Abel is about a battle between two ways of of applying rules, destructive and creative.

- You've written this down?

- Sure, not that anyone reads anything.

- Doesn't matter.

- Yes, that's the point I want to make. Write the truth in the midst of all the fakery, you're Abel living in Cain's world. You are the only guest of the "family" hotel at the Citadel. Down in the city when I tell people about where I stay I use the Italian word for family, "mafia". I hope they don't mind.

- Nobody is interested in you.

- I'm real taken as fake, safe so long as no one sees the reality and tries to profit by it.

- What good are you to anyone?

- Well, what good was it to Cain killing his brother? It was a symbolic act. And as we see at the Citadel the whole place is functioning as a symbol of the family's power, doing nothing else in fact. I am here only so long as there is no symbolic benefit in throwing me out. I am waiting for that time to come. It will, won't it?

- Yes. You know this place.

- 17 years since the first time I stayed here.

- Time have changed.

- The world is at war, economic, social war. Cain is out to eradicate Abel, out to weed him from his field. But, you know, history has moved on. Abel is more able.

- Abel is more able. I like that.

- Abel knows better, he can put into words just how the world is a war between those educated by man and those educated by god. He knows all the words thrown about around him are fakery, are all lies, gangsters' symbols of power. Education by man begins with killing a man, but proclaims itself to be education by god. It all about following rules and goes by the name of fundamentalism.

But education by God is something small and on the human scale, is the rule breaking and wandering life and goes by the name "humanism". God made humans, but humans make each other something else, something much worse, something fake, something oversimplified, something "fundamental".